Industry impressed by chainsaw drone work
Prof Richard Green, left, and Dr Sam Schofield with the new chainsaw drone they’ve developed as part of a University of Canterbury Vision research team project. PHOTOS: SUPPLIED
A chainsaw drone developed by a University of Canterbury team to cut wrist-size branches in hazardous areas may be commercialised soon.A chainsaw drone developed by a University of Canterbury team to cut wrist-size branches in hazardous areas may be commercialised soon.
The team led by computer science professor Richard Green and mechanical engineering professor Dan Zhao has spent eight years designing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) as precision tools for challenging environments.
A display of the prototype chainsaw drone at work impressed industry representatives last week.
Prof Green said the new drone was a more cost-effective, efficient and safer option for trimming trees around power lines and pylons without the need of ladders and scaffolding or putting workers at risk.
The innovation could be a useful working addition for arboriculture, electricity infrastructure and civil construction industries.
A drone carrying a pruning tool developed last year was limited to cutting 30mm branches, while the chainsaw drone could get through about 60mm of dead wood, he said.
"It’s working so well now that we have got funding for commercialisation, so I expect it to be commercialised next year."
Advances in electric chainsaw technology with small electric motors and improving battery technology had assisted the drone development, he said.
"When pruning branches near power lines they have to do it while they are alive because we can’t turn the power off to everyone’s homes just because a few branches need to be pruned. Long poles with loppers close to power lines and even climbing up trees to cut branches [can be hazardous] and apart from working faster it’s actually a significantly improved health and safety operation when you use a drone."
Other applications could include inaccessible and hard-to-reach sites and within built-up urban areas.
A new chainsaw drone making tree pruning next to power lines safer was developed by a University of Canterbury Vision research team led by Prof Richard Green.
He had naively thought using drones to cut branches would be easy 10 years ago, but it had its aerodynamic challenges, Prof Green said.He had naively thought using drones to cut branches would be easy 10 years ago, but it had its aerodynamic challenges, Prof Green said.
Flying drones in windy conditions next to trees required a lot of artificial intelligence (AI) navigational algorithm work to calculate the motion and branch movements to avoid propellers clipping them, he said.
"We have been working on it for pruning pine trees as well, for people interested in milling clear wood for furniture. Half our forests are on such steep, rugged hills with big boulders that you would be challenged to get a vehicle with wheels up there, whereas drones can get there easily and prune the branches up the pine trees as low as you need."
The main focus at the present time was on drone pruning near power lines as that work was completed around the world, he said.
He was unsure if chainsaw drones would be used to cut large trees in the near future or be used for fighting wildfires.
"But I was talking to some fire folk recently and they are really starting to use that drone technology to get water for the fires. That’s an area of technology I’m not involved with, but I know there’s been some huge steps forward with the amount of water payload these drones can carry."
Potentially, chainsaw drones operated from a distance could clear vegetation for water-carrying drones to access fires.
Computer science experts were being brought increasingly into engineering projects as they entered the next phase of AI, computer vision and algorithms, Prof Green said.
"When I look at my projects, which are automating pruning vineyards and grabbing mussels underwater and pruning trees near power lines, over 90% of the time is actually spent on the AI programming."
Other researchers involved in the project, funded over five years by a $10million grant from the Ministry of Business, Innovation and Employment, include senior research engineer Dr Sam Schofield and University of Auckland mechanical engineering professor Karl Stol.
The team is also working with New Zealand UAV experts, international researchers and UAV manufacturers and users.